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About CHARM

The traditional musicological approach is to see music as a written text reproduced
in performance. But much music does not exist in the form of a written text,
circulating purely in the form of recordings. And even when music does exist as a
written text, performers play an essential role in creating the experience that, for
most people, is the music. CHARM was established to promote a musicology
that better reflects the nature of music as experienced in the twentieth century and
beyond.

Recordings are essential evidence for a musicology attuned to performance, but there
have long been substantial obstacles to scholarly investigation of them. CHARM's
research program was structured round three of these obstacles:

the dispersal of knowledge about recordings. CHARM addressed this through
organising symposia and other
events, papers from which are available on this website

a lack of well developed approaches to researching recordings. CHARM
addressed this through a series of research
projects, ranging from computational analysis to business
history.

A fourth obstacle is the increasingly restrictive nature of copyright legislation:
CHARM campaigned for the extension of fair dealing to include sound recordings, and
against extension of the copyright term on sound recordings.

Click here for a list of CHARM
personnel, here for details of
how CHARM was structured, here for
information on how to use and cite material from this website, here for information regarding copyright on materials
within the CHARM website, and here for
information on getting in touch.